There’s more than one way to injure yourself in a kitchen (also titled – How much worse can this coming weekend get?)

I know of three basic ways you can injure yourself in a kitchen – being burned; being cut or stabbed; or slipping on the floor.

When I got to work yesterday I was informed that my chef was in the hospital after burning his face with scalding hot water.  Apparently we had cleaned out the deep fryer and was disposing of the water (which I’m assuming would have been around 300 degrees) when something went terribly wrong and the container slipped from his hand, spraying his face in the process.

From the last I heard he’s doing well and went home last night (albeit against doctors orders), but who knows when we’ll see him in the kitchen, especially in any way that will help us.  The best he could do for us all is to stay home, rest and get better quicker.

Last night continued to suck as well.  We (just the sous chef and I) got slammed, ended up 86’ing way more things than either of us would have liked due to yesterday’s prep work getting cut short. 

Two slightly happy notes from last night though was that the Dining Out Club from my school were supposed to eat at the restaurant and ended up cancelling at the last minute (that could have made everything substantially worse); and I had a friend from school come in to eat dinner who said that from the dining room’s point of view everything was great with the food and he couldn’t tell a thing about how bad off we were.

But to end on two down points – yesterday was just day two of a seven in a row stint for me, and it sucked.  And the worse part is that it doesn’t look like things will improve, since this weekend we were already going to be missing the other line cook who’s going on vacation.  Sure, we’ll have a replacement for two nights in the weekday prep cook, but it’s not the same.  Just five more nights to get through.

Serenity now.

• Kitchen injuries